


Penelope in Waiting

by karrenia_rune



Category: Gargoyles (TV)
Genre: Community: fanfic100, Exactly What It Says on the Tin, F/M, Promptfic, what if
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-15
Updated: 2014-02-15
Packaged: 2018-01-12 13:19:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1186838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karrenia_rune/pseuds/karrenia_rune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Goliath was not only member of the clan to have his own angel of the night; this is Hudson's story.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Penelope in Waiting

Disclaimer: Gargoyles belongs to Buena Vista Television and Disney; it is not mine. Notes: slightly AU in terms that Hudson uses the Phoenix Gate to go back in time and bring ghis lost forward to the present era. 

 

“Penelope in Waiting” by Karen

The shadows grow longer across the stone flagstones of the castle courtyard had become very long when she chose that moment to look up into the sky.

It was only then that she realized that if she wished to avoid turning to stone in that spot she would have to move or risk becoming part of the collection in the adjoining topiary garden. 

Penelope smiled to herself at that thought and decided she could linger a few precious seconds longer to the admire the few of the setting that painted the sky like an artist's pallet of colors.

The clan of gargoyles that had made Castle Wyvern their home and protectorate had never had much use for naming everything and everyone around them, until they made an alliance with the humans who also called the castle home. In their close-knit community they simply could identify everyone by certain characteristics, traits and coloring.

For the humans' benefit almost all the gargoyles had adopted the names given to them by them. Because of her wheat-blond hair and quiet mannerisms that she had been dubbed Penelope. 

She rolled the syllables of the name around on her tongue as if trying them out like the bouquet of a fine wine. After a minute or after thinking it over, she decided that she liked the sound of it. “I wonder if the roses have come up yet. I should remember to check before going back to join the others on patrol.

***  
Present Day

Hudson had just settled in for a night watching the picture box with Bronx curled up on the rug at his feet. He had been on the clan’s nightly patrols and had told Goliath that he would like a little quiet time. Goliath had not been entirely pleased with his decision, but as the leader he knew better when to push and when to let well enough alone.

Bronx was the first to notice anything amiss, so when Bronx’s contented breathing abruptly changed to a low growl. Pitched very low, but enough for his old but sill sensitive ears to pick up on. Hudson had been a warrior for a long time, old as he was, he recognized danger and a potential threat when faced with one. 

“If ye have any sense or mettle at all, you’d know to come out and face me,” Hudson rumbled as he stood up with Bronx flanking him, and took a 360 degree look around the small narrow room.

“So what are ye’ waiting for?” Hudson demanded,” the burr of his old-fashioned Scottish accent more pronounced when was tensed and ready for a fight.

Although Hudson could not see any sign of an intruder or a forced entry, something was definitely wrong, Hudson just wished that he had been able to determined exactly what that elusive ‘something was.

A gradually coalescing brightness at one of the windows in the direction he was facing attracted his attention. “Sorcery,” Hudson rumbled. “That meddling, no-account, unpredictable trickster, Puck has to be behind this.”

Hudson drew his sword from its sheath, prepared to face the unexpected. When the red and black glow had engulfed the entire lead-paned window, and spread in graduating bigger and bigger concentric rings of fire, Hudson thought in the back of his mind, “That maybe this was something he could not fight with courage, determination and naked steel. Turning to dart a quick look at Bronx, “Any bright ides, old boy?”

Encounter

The first roses of spring had come up in the castle’s rooftop garden, and The Mage, and councilor to Prince Malcolm of Castle Wyvern found the garden a relaxing retreat and a respite from the pressures and stress of statecraft. It did not much surprise to find his daughter, Princess Catherine also in the garden, kneeling among the dahlias and day lilies, the skirts of her dresses hiked up to around her knees and her face smudged with dirt. He sighed, and wondered whether or not he should reprimand her or leave her to her own devices. 

What did surprise him was that she was in company with one of the castle’s resident protector gargoyles, a female with tawny and gold coloring, one he did not know by name, or recognize. The pair, one human and one gargoyle were pruning the roses with a pair of clippers.

“Fine day for gardening,” Malcolm remarked.

“AH, Papa, it is,” Catherine replied.

At that moment a strident voice interrupted the quiet moment between father and daughter.

“You, what are you doing here!” the Mage demanded, his robes flying every which in the wind blowing the upraised merlons of the castle and the speed of his own passage. It would have been quite comical, Hudson, thought, if it had not been for the raw emotion of rage and confusion that twisted the human magic worker’s handsome features.

“Mage,” Hudson tried a conciliatory reassuring tone, vaguely wondering if this was some kind of dream. The scar over one eye had affected his vision, and the vision in his other eye had begun to dim in recent years. 

Dimming vision or no, Hudson had always prided himself on his ability to recall, places, names, events, and if memory served the last he had seen of the Mage was almost ten centuries ago when the Mage, in grief and rage over what he had believed to be the deliberate death of Princess Catherine at the hands of Goliath, had cast the stone sleep spell over the gargoyles that had survived the Vikings’ assault on the castle.

To see him again, like this, was to say the least, quite a shock. Accompany the Mage was someone that Hudson had, a long time ago accepted the fact that he would never see her again, at least not in waking. 

 

However, he had dreamed about her, his own Angel of the Night, when he had served as clan leader prior to electing Goliath to the position when they had awoken from the stone sleep spell in the late twentieth century. Hudson rubbed his temples with the back of his hands, muttering under his breath. “Ah, what a muddle, it all makes me head hurt. “You, Mage, are a sorcerer, mayhap you can explain it all to me, because I Cannae make any sense of it.”

“Why should I, apparition,” The Mage retorted, although this time some of the wildness and pent up emotion had faded from his voice and manner. 

“Hudson?” the female tawny and gold female gargoyle whispered when she had caught up with the human magician and then outpaced him, her wings draped over her shoulders to lay like a cape. “Ah, tis really ye?” she asked, as she ran toward him and wrapped her arms around him in greeting.

“Penelope?” Hudson replied, still a bit disoriented, but relaxing into the remembered embrace of his lost love, wrapping his own arms around her. 

She let go, reluctantly and then stepped back to give him a good, long appraisal, “What happened to yet. It seemed like only a fortnight that ye, Goliath, Demona and yet we off on the quest to retrieve the Grimormim, and that blighted sorcerer, the Archmage led ye on a wild goose chase hither and yon. I had given up almost all hope of seeing ye again.”

“I remember that quest,” Hudson replied. “It was an adventure I’ll never forget, but all the same, I think we’d best find someplace else to talk.”

“The rooftop rose garden,” Penelope suggested. 

“The rose garden,” Hudson replied. “Wherever here was, whether it was a waking dream or a memory conjured up out of his murky subconscious, either way it felt real, it looked real, it even smelled real. He wrinkled his nose and could detect the mingled smells of dry rock, musty stone, dirt, dry sweat of the human soldiers standing guard at the castle’s walls, and on the warm afternoon spring breeze that had shifted from west to northeast, the faint but sweet scent of just blooming roses. “Let us go, then.”

“Penelope,” Hudson began, and then trailed off into an awkward silence. “This might sound a wee bit strange, but this cannae be happening.”

“Why not?” Penelope replied, as she led him over to a floor bed where Princess Catherine was at work with the soil and the plants. 

“Because from where I came from,’ this,’ Hudson gestured around the rooftop garden and out toward the other visible parts of the castle. “All this, is in ruins, and half a world away, on an island called Manhattan.”

“Hudson, ye old goat, ye were always the sentimental type.” Penelope replied. 

“I am trying to be serious here,” he said.

“I realize that,” she replied. “Dear heart, if truth be told, I have had stranger waking dreams of late, ones that I have not even told to the other clan members.”

“What nature did these dreams take,” Hudson asked. 

“Odd, things and buildings whose designs could not possibly exist in this day and age. These buildings are made of glass and stone, and tower to the sky. Carriages are driven by motive forces but without horses or other beasts of burdens to pull them.” Penelope sighed and tilted her head to one side as if thinking the matter through. “Hudson, I am glad you are here now. I am at my wit’s end trying to understand what these dream images might signify.”

“Ah me. I feel that there is more than magic at work in this business,” Hudson replied. And I believe it was magic that brought me here, at precisely this time and place.”

“Then the dreams are telling me that we are meant to be together.” Penelope exclaimed, her confusion and lingering fear about not only the images in the dreams but also their potential source, fading in the solid reassurance that Hudson’s presence had always instilled in her. 

“Hudson, the dreams aside,” she replied in a more matter-of-fact of tone. “While you and the others were gone, I fear that we are beginning to wear out our welcome. Trouble is brewing, and there are those. I shall name them, not at this juncture, that feel that our clan should make preparations for moving on.”

“I do not know,” Hudson replied a bit confused and overwhelmed by everything that was happening to him.

“I should be getting back to the others, but how, I feel I have become unstuck in time.” Hudson muttered and ambled over to the wall where the roses were tumbling over themselves for room, heat and light. 

Hudson placed his arms on top of the wall and glanced out and over the rolling hills that fronted on the castle’s mound on which it was built. A sudden thought struck him, and in the back of his mind, he chided himself for a fool. He should have known by now, that one could not cheat fate, and that magic or not, the odds of bringing both himself and his lost love back to the 20th century were staggering, but he loved her enough then and now, to take the risk.

“We are leaving here and you are coming with me.”

“Where”

Hudson chuckled. “I feel quite ridiculous ever uttering it, but all the same, we are going to the future.”

“I had a distinct feeling that you were going to say that. I have some influence with the Mage, let us go see if he is in a more receptive mood now.” Penelope smiled and stepped over to where Hudson gazed out at the horizon. She reached over and gently turned him around so that he faced her, and brought his face level with her own. They leant in for a kiss and stood locked together that way for a long time.


End file.
